Karen Bennett

Why the Exclusion Problem Seems Intractable, and How, Just Maybe, to Tract It

1. The Problem The basic form of the exclusion problem is by now very, very familiar. 2 Start with the claim that the physical realm is causally complete: every physical thing that happens has a sufficient physical cause. Add in the claim that the mental and the physical are distinct. Toss in some claims about overdetermination, give it a stir, and voilá—suddenly it looks as though the mental never causes anything, at least nothing physical. As it is often put, the physical does all the work, and there is nothing left for the mental to do. I have purposely left that version neutral between events and properties; slightly different versions arise depending upon whether it is type or token identity that is denied. That distinction will matter a bit later on, but for now I shall continue to speak neutrally in order to bring out the overall shape of the problem. It is a forceful argument. And the primary reason for this, I think, is that it does not attempt to claim that there is something about the nature of the mental that renders it incapable of causing anything. This means that it is rather different from other worries about the efficacy of the mental, such as those that arise for Cartesian dualists, those that arise in the wake of Davidsons anomalous monism (1969), and those that arise for externalists about mental content (Block 1990). Those worries turn on claims about the failings of the mental—that it is not spatially extended, or is not invoked in the requisite sort of strict laws, or is somehow inappropriately extrinsic. The exclusion problem, in contrast, does not purport to show that mental events and properties are somehow by their nature unsuited to causing anything. It is rather that even if they are perfectly suited to causing things, there is nothing around for them to cause. 3 2 This can be seen by means of the commonplace observation that the exclusion problem does not get off the ground without the claims about overdetermination to which I made but offhand reference above—in particular, that a) any physical effect that did have a sufficient mental cause would be overdetermined, and b) the physical effects of mental causes are not systematically overdetermined in this way. The reason those claims are crucial is that there is otherwise no reason to think that the mental never causes anything. After …

Having a Part Twice Over

I argue that it is intuitive and useful to think about composition in the light of the familiar functionalist distinction between role and occupant. This involves factoring the standard notion of parthood into two related notions: being a parthood slot and occupying a parthood slot. One thing is part of another just in case it fills one of that things parthood slots. This move opens room to rethink mereology in various ways, and, in particular, to see the mereological structure of a composite as potentially outreaching the individual entities that are its parts. I sketch one formal system that allows things to have individual entities as parts multiple times over. This is particularly useful to David Armstrong, given Lewiss charge that his structural universals must do exactly that. I close by reflecting upon the nature and point of formal mereology.